April 2013

04/05/2013

The following is an e-mail news note that I received from Emily's organization yesterday. I can't wait to see this film!

April 4, 2013

Dear friends,

This Saturday, If You Build It, a full-length documentary film about our Studio Hprogram in Bertie County, NC, will premiere at the Full Frame film festival in Raleigh!

We are humbled and honored to have worked with executive producer Neal Baer (of Law and Order: SVU, ER, and more) and filmmakers Patrick Creadon and Christine O'Malley (previous documentaries include Wordplay and I.O.U.S.A) over the past three years to tell the story of Studio H, our students, and the educational and community architecture work we lived and breathed in Bertie County. We will be attending the premiere on Saturday along with our students from Bertie County, mayors, leaders, and community collaborators who helped to make the project possible. Our deepest gratitude goes out to everyone involved in the making of the film, the re-telling of our story, and the stories of our students' journeys and transformations throughout the school year.

Tickets for the premiere at the Full Frame festival are sold out, however the film will be screened in other venues soon. If you are interested screening the film at your school, organization, or venue, please drop us a note and we will connect you to the filmmakers.

From the Full Frame film festival website:

If You Build It: "Designers Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller bring their radical and innovative educational program to Bertie County, North Carolina, transforming people and place over the course of a turbulent and inspiring year. Each season brings a new set of challenges, both prescribed and unexpected, and the resourceful instructors (and their industrious students) must apply the principles of their curriculum—design, build, transform—to their lives as well as to their projects. Earnest, determined, and rousing, the film and its subjects, raise questions of self-reliance, citizenship, and community-building in its most literal interpretation."

We hope that through this film, we can continue to tell our story and inspire many more projects like Studio H around the country. Last year, we moved our Studio H operations to REALM Charter School in Berkeley, CA, where we continue to build community architecture projects with students. This film is a reminder of where we have come from and how much more work we have to do. Thank you to all of you who have supported us so wholeheartedly along the way.